Go Through His Pockets and Look For Loose Change
by Lucillia
Summary: Naruto is a good ninja and a good person. Aside from his little corpse robbing habit that is.
1. Prologue: Mizuki's Lesson

Mizuki had started working at the Academy as an Assistant Instructor two weeks after his "friend" Iruka. Since they "Worked so well together", he was assigned to assist Iruka in giving his lessons. The work wasn't bad, but it hadn't been what he'd seen himself doing with his life when he'd started out. The only blot on the perfection of this portion of his career however was the fact that Iruka had been assigned to the class that contained the Kyuubi.

It wouldn't be so bad if Iruka would let him misdirect the creature under his watch. The man wanted to treat it as just another one of his students and give it the same education he gave the others though. This meant that anything he did to sabotage the animal's education had to be done either when the man wasn't looking, or so subtly that the man didn't notice it, much the way that he didn't notice that he'd been deliberately picking at his sore spots.

He'd gotten a bit of inspiration from little Hibachi earlier, and had come up with a good way of teaching the Kyuubi how to get itself killed as soon as it was sent out into the field.

From a practical standpoint, corpse robbing wasn't advisable because there was a chance that it would turn out that the "corpse" wasn't actually a corpse, and the presumably deceased could spring up and kill you as you were attempting to loot their body. Over the decades, as an increasingly civilian viewpoint made its way through shinobi culture, being brought in by the increasing number of ninja who were descended from said civilians, it was a matter of respect for the dead, and robbing corpses could get you stabbed by one of your own comrades as well. These days, corpse robbing, aside from the taking of the occasional trophy here and there, wasn't something which was openly done, and even trophy takers were looked down on to a degree.

The Kyuubi, having not been educated in normal social behavior didn't seem to notice this fact, as the adventure that Hibachi had related illustrates. The creature had been perfectly willing to rob a corpse in order to gain "friends". A few words at the right moments, and the animal would be willing to do so for the hell of it...


	2. The True Start of it All

Naruto carefully poked Mizuki. He wasn't quite dead, but he also wasn't about to attack him either. After that last wild attack where he'd sent several hundred clones charging at him, the man had been rendered unconscious, and could die if he didn't get medical attention soon. He couldn't bring himself to care about that at the moment though. The man had tricked him, and had tried to kill him and Iruka-sensei.

Iruka-sensei who wasn't as badly hurt as he thought he was when he'd seen that giant shuriken bury itself in his back, was tending to his injuries as best he could with his limited supplies behind him. His vest had blocked the worst of the blow, but there was still a massive gash in the middle of his back just to the side of his spine. A gash that was taking almost all of the contents of his First-Aid kit to tend to, which was worrisome since Iruka-sensei had other injuries that needed to be tended to as well.

Being a ninja, Mizuki was sure to have extra First-Aid supplies on him somewhere.

After rummaging through Mizuki's vest and side pouches and pockets a bit, he had found the ninja's First-Aid kit as well as several other items that might be useful later on. Ninjas always had useful things on them, but he needed the First-Aid kit right now though.

As he handed Iruka-sensei the First-Aid kit and noticed the grateful look in the man's eyes, he realized that, despite what he'd been taught when he'd stolen some food which he hadn't needed at the time from the marketplace, there were some circumstances where stealing wasn't wrong. Iruka-sensei had needed the kit more than Mizuki did, and it wasn't as if Mizuki would be able to use it right now.

Despite being a lying bastard, Mizuki had been right in this case. If the owner couldn't use something for whatever reason, such as being unconscious or dead, it was just going to waste, and someone who had more need of it should take it.


	3. Kakashi's Lecture

Naruto swung his feet back and forth under the dock he was sitting at the edge of. Sakura-chan had been yelling at him off and on all day about having "Respect for the dead". He didn't know why though, because he hadn't vandalized any cemeteries, and didn't plan on disrupting that swordsman guy's funeral whenever it was going to take place. The Old Man had taught him all about having respect for the dead, and there hadn't been anything about not redistributing useful supplies anywhere in that long and boring lecture on why one mustn't disrupt someone's funeral with a prank no matter how much you disliked them.

What did taking potentially useful supplies like the ones he'd found in the scroll in the Demon of the Mist guy's pocket have to do with disrespecting the dead?

The dead guy wasn't going to use them, and they'd go to waste otherwise. Since the man had been an enemy, it wasn't like he'd been stealing from a comrade, which he'd been told by just about everybody was a major no-no.

So, what was Sakura-chan's problem?

After pondering on this question for a while, he figured that it was one of those girl things he'd probably never understand, and he decided to shelve the problem for later and take further inventory of his new acquisitions. As he sorted through the correspondence that had been sealed in that Mist guy's scroll along with a spare pair of trousers that looked like they might fit Iruka-sensei, Kakashi-sensei sat down next to him.

"Naruto?" Kakashi-sensei said when he was seated in a comfortable position.

"Yes Kakashi-sensei?" he asked.

"Has anyone taught you the rules regarding er...Battlefield Acquisitions?" Kakashi-sensei asked slightly awkwardly.

"Battlefield Acquisitions?" he asked, wondering if it was yet another complicated phrase that turned out to mean something very simple the way "Carnal Relations" was a fancy way of saying "Sex". He'd learned that one from a drunk who had called him "Fucking - yet another way of saying sex - stupid" amongst other things.

"I'll tell you what my father told me before he died." Kakashi-sensei said.

"What was that?" he asked, deciding to pay attention to his teacher since he was taking the time to give him a one-on-one lesson, rather than focusing on Sasuke.

"The civilians have a funny way of doing things, and as long as it isn't hurting anyone, we should try to accommodate them. That means no looting corpses in the open." Kakashi-sensei replied.

"So, that means we should only take stuff from the dead ninja who are indoors?" he asked after a moment's thought, knowing that this was an important lesson, and he should seek clarification in case he missed something important before his teacher decided to stop teaching.

"No," Kakashi-sensei sighed. "It means that we aren't supposed to take stuff off of dead bodies while people are watching."

"So, if Sakura-chan hadn't been looking, it would have been fine?" he asked.

Kakashi-sensei gave him a blank stare for about a minute before sighing, shaking his head, muttering "He's worse than Obito.", getting up, and going back inside.

**Author's Note: **An account of the events that preceded this is chronicled in _The Difference Between Mostly and All._


	4. Interlude: A Generation Prior

One of the more amazing things about Namikaze Minato's meteoric rise had been that he had had not come from a ninja background, unlike most who had been hailed as geniuses and prodigies in the Ninja world. He had gotten to the top with hard work, determination, and the sort of genius that was found maybe twice a century at best.

The effects his civilian background had had on his upbringing tended to rear their head at random times though, such as now.

"You will put everything back where you got it from and, for your punishment, you will give the people you stole those from a proper burial." he said as he paced in front of his three chastened students who were standing behind small piles of weapons and supplies.

"Nice going Obito." Rin said two hours later as the team dug yet another grave. "If you hadn't started yelling, Sensei wouldn't have caught us. You know how he is about these things."

"Do you have any idea how rare that weapon was?" Obito replied from where he was preparing the corpse for burial.

"Yes." Kakashi said. "I found one myself, but you didn't hear me yelling "Jackpot!" at the top of my lungs."

"You think Sensei'll notice if I...?" Obito said.

"Yes." Kakashi promptly replied.

"Damn."


	5. Suspicious Packages

Sakura looked at the oddly shaped package Naruto was dragging home from Wave suspiciously. There had been a sword on Momochi Zabuza's grave when they'd buried him but, it hadn't been there when she'd visited it prior to their departure. The package she was looking at wasn't quite long enough to be the gigantic sword with a handle that could be stood on that Zabuza had owned however. That, and it was nearly twice as wide as the massive blade that had been a treasure of Kirigakure for generations before Zabuza had taken it when he left following his attempted assassination of the Mizukage.

Since the package didn't quite match the proportions of the sword that had served as Momochi Zavuza's headstone, she hadn't tried to call Naruto on it in case she was wrong. It was entirely possible that Naruto had been given a present by one of the locals who thought of him as a big hero despite the fact that Sasuke and Kakashi did most of the work and Naruto pretty much just made a fool of himself and nearly got Sasuke killed. Calling Naruto on the possible grave robbery only for the "stolen" item to turn out to be a present would be beyond mortifying at this point, especially since everyone including Sasuke and her sensei had given her funny looks when she'd pointed out that Sasuke had done more of the fighting than Naruto who couldn't even follow the plan.

Naruto watched Sakura watch the package he was dragging home on a small toy wagon that Inari had given him for said purpose waiting for the girl to say something. So far she hadn't. He had a feeling he knew why she hadn't, and it was because the wrapped package was the "wrong size".

Apparently, she had failed to notice that the handle to Zabuza's sword was capable of unscrewing for easier carrying.


End file.
